


The Hermit of Fuchong

by whoami (davidbowie)



Series: Bangtan Meets the Gaang [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 19:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13301715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davidbowie/pseuds/whoami
Summary: Yoongi always thought it must be bullshit that every airbender was spiritually enlightened, even before he found out he was one.





	The Hermit of Fuchong

It all started with Yoongi's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Basically, he knocked up an Earth Kingdom girl, claimed monks couldn't have earthly attachments, then fucked off to parts unknown. But then, from what Yoongi understood of Air Nomad customs, that was par for the course. The male and female monks shacked up once a year for a week in the spring, then the resulting children were shipped off, to either the north and south temples if they were boys or to the opposite temple of their mother if they were girls, and nobody had any earthly attachments (or parents). The little Yoongi knew of the secretive (and extinct) Air Nomads, he had learned from his mother. She had heard it from her father, who had heard it from his mother, and so on, tracing their lineage all the way back to the rather vivacious Earth Kingdom girl from Fuchong who had charmed (and been charmed) by an Air Nomad from the Northern Temple. ("It's all men who live in that temple," he had said. "It gets a bit lonely, with just the wind for company.") That had been eight generations ago - eight generations and Yoongi has the shit luck to be the first descendant who could actually airbend.

His father had been taken by the war and his mother taken not long after that by grief. They hadn't even known he could bend; he bent for the first time 3 years after his mother's death, at ten years old. Maybe that was late; the few earthbenders he'd known had all been bending by eight at the latest, and there were stories that the Fire Nation's imperial firebenders first bent at two years old. So maybe it was late, but who the fuck knew what was normal for a damn airbender? He had done his best to train his bending, to make it be of some use, but he had no master, no scrolls, not even a vague idea of what airbending forms looked like. And just his fucking luck, his bending was strong. Too strong to be untrained in the middle of a village where they all lived on top of each other; he'd either hurt someone or get found out by the Fire Nation. So he thought, maybe he could live at the air temple? There had to be some way the monks grew food and got water, and he wouldn't be bothering anyone (and anyone wouldn't be bothering him).

So much for that idea; just his luck to be an airbender who was afraid of heights. Maybe, he thought, if he were actually any good at airbending, he would overcome his fear. As it was, the only thing his airbending would do during his (inevitable) fall to his death was create a hideous shrieking wind that would alert everyone to his stupidity (and the location of his corpse). But he did find several nice clearings and relatively dry caves halfway up the mountain. He could probably grow most of his food on his own, and he didn't eat much meat anyway. The village was in the foothills, the temple on top; wasn't it right that he, with blood from both, lived in the middle?

So Fuchong gained a mountain hermit. He lived there in relative peace and solitude for a few years. By then he had figured out a few things, like how to scare off animals that he didn't want near him or how to keep a cool breeze on his skin during the hot summer months. Some days he liked to climb (just a little higher, mind you) to a waterfall a few hours from his hut, and there he'd spend the day, feeling the way the breezes moved with the heat from the sun and the cool of the earth and the flow of the water.

Then, everything changed when some fools who couldn't even kind of airbend decided that living on top of a mountain was definitely a reasonable thing to do. He saw their party go up the mountain, struggle through the steep passes, and, eventually, smoke started rising from the temple. All that was none of Yoongi's business, of course. They weren't bothering him so he wasn't going to bother them. If he sometimes watched the figures gliding through the air (gliding through the air! They weren't even benders!) from his waterfall, well, it would take extra effort to go out of his way to ignore them. If, sometimes, one of the figures seemed about to fall out of the sky as the wind dropped out from under them and Yoongi created an updraft under their wings, that's because he came out to this damn mountain to practice his airbending in the first place. It's not his fault those damn flying fools got in the way sometimes. Besides, if one of them fell the rest would be down the side of the mountain looking for them, and they'd probably bother him. So he was just saving himself the effort, in the long run.

Really.

But then one of the little assholes had to come down his side of the mountain.

"Are you an airbender?"

Was this kid for real? 

"I mean- thank you." Yoongi continued to fix the kid with an unimpressed stare. "Um, it's just- we've all had times where we almost fell? Off our gliders? And then the wind changes direction and- and then we, uh, don't. Fall."

"Airbenders don't exist anymore, kid. Ask anyone."

"I know!" said the kid defensively. "We won't tell anyone. But if you need something, we grow a lot of things and we're just up the path-"

"I don't need anything from you." The kid wilted. "But thanks."

Just looking at a smile that wide make Yoongi exhausted.

Somehow, even though he had told them he didn't need anything (several times, explicitly), there was a little pack of ankle-biters who invaded his home ("It's called visiting, Sifu!") every two to three weeks. For airbending lessons. Like it was somehow his job to make sure they didn't crack their fool skulls open, flying around on homemade gliders ("What other kind of glider is there, Sifu?"). But still, no amount of dirty glares and pointed silences drove them off, so it was ultimately less effort to just ignore them and let them get what 'teachings' he was supposedly giving them. If they got something out of watching him garden and meditate at the waterfall and write poetry, he guessed he couldn't stop them. And sometimes, they asked him questions about air currents that any person with any damned common sense would know, and he couldn't let them jump off the top of a mountain not even knowing about how wind moved in a rain storm. Because they might fall and splatter all over his garden, obviously, and his yams were just coming in.

Years passed, and soon the time Yoongi had lived with the fools in the temple was longer than his time on the mountain alone. It was all nice and peaceful, there on his side of the mountain, even with the brats disturbing the peace and giggling all over the place. Then one day in late fall, a brat came to visit, looking uncharacteristically (worryingly) serious.

"Teo said to tell you," Li Ling said, "that the Avatar is up in the temple right now."

Yoongi looked up from his waterskin slowly. "There is no Avatar."

"I know," she said, "but it's really him, Sifu. He's an airbender with a glider and everything, but he can make wind, too, and he can waterbend. I saw it!"

Yoongi stood up from the riverbank, brushing off his knees. "Why are you telling me? What do I care about an Avatar, whether he can waterbend or not?"

"Well, he's- You know. He's an airbender," Li Ling finished hesitantly.

Yoongi began walking back to his hut.

"And you're an airbender, Sifu!" she cried, running up behind him. "He's like you, you can finally be with your people and learn about your culture!"

"Airbenders don't exist anymore. Ask anyone. And I don't have any 'people' or 'culture' to learn about. I'm where I'm supposed to be, unlike some brats I could name."

Li Ling looked up at him uncertainly. "Teo said to tell you, to ask if you wanted us to tell Avatar Aang about you or not, but-"

"Definitely 'or not'."

"But he's like your family, Sifu-"

"I don't have any family, kid. And, as a matter of fact, Air Nomads don't have any family, either. Me and this Avatar are nothing to each other and I don't want him bothering me. Now that I think about it, I don't want you btohering me, either. Don't you have a cliff to jump off?"

Yoongi glanced over his shoulder to see Li Ling, eyes watering and fists clenched. "You don't even know him, Sifu. He's only 12 and he's so lonely, seeing that airbenders don't live in the temple anymore. He misses his old friends, other airbenders, and I know another airbender would-"

"That sounds like his problem. Besides, airbenders don't-"

"-exist anymore, ask anyone," Li Ling finished, rolling her eyes. "I know, Sifu. But he's all alone."

"So am I. Or I try to be," Yoongi said, stopping at the door to his hut and turning to face the brat. "I am absolutely sure that meeting me wouldn't help this kid at all. You probably know more about his culture than I do, living up in that temple. I'm just an Earth Kindom citizen who lives in a hut on a mountain. I have nothing to offer him, and I have what I need." He turned her around, pressing a hand between her shoulders and pushing. "Now go. Listen to the Avatar's sob stories, make pie, do whatever it is you do when you're not tormenting me."

Li Ling grudgingly pulled her glider from her back, opening its wings. "I won't tell him if you don't want me to. That's really what Teo wanted me to find out."

Yoongi rolled his eyes. "I know. Get out of my sight, brat."

She took off with a huff and the help of what might be called an unusually strong wind. Yoongi found these kinds of winds convenient, as they saved him the trouble of walking the brat to the nearest cliff. Those kind of breezes happened all the time on a mountain, Yoongi reasoned. Nothing strange about that for her to prattle on about.

Besides, airbenders didn't exist anymore. Ask anyone.

**Author's Note:**

> idk i wrote this two summers ago and decided i should just post it??


End file.
